François Bugingo admits to fabricating his international reporting

“François Bugingo: des reportages inventés de toutes pièces” reads the headline today in La Presse: An investigative report by Isabelle Hachey reveals the Quebec journalist famous for his international reporting lied about his trips abroad and reported as first-hand accounts things he merely heard about or did not exist.

“You know very well that the news I share with you is always verified, solid and respects your attention,” he writes. “I will defend my integrity at the proper time, and through the proper forums.”

Six days later, a confession of sorts:

Hachey’s story contains statements from eight named sources who directly contradict things Bugingo has said in his reporting or in interviews about his experiences abroad.

Among the things he is accused of making up:

Being in Misrata, Libya, and witnessing a torturer from the Gadhafi regime about to execute rebel militants.*

Witnessing a man shooting guns during the day and playing guitar at night in Sarajevo in 1993, something he described as one of the more remarkable moments of his career. (Bugingo told La Presse he actually went to Sarajevo in 1995 with two other journalists, both of whom told La Presse that also wasn’t true.)

Being in Iraq in 2003 and trying to sell a story to L’Actualité.

Being a freelancer for Radio France Internationale, Agence France-Presse and Agence panafricaine de presse in the 1990s.*

What’s worse is that the story quotes Bugingo contradicting himself, now denying things he earlier asserted. The items marked with * above are things he now denies he did.

For this to be a mistake it would have to be some seriously vast conspiracy. Either La Presse is lying about what he said to them, or more than half a dozen credible named sources have lied to a La Presse reporter for no apparent reason, or just about every profile of him over the past five years has misquoted him or said false things about him that he hasn’t tried to correct. And even if that’s the case, it doesn’t cover all the things he said himself on air or in stories he’s written.

Despite his woe-is-me Facebook post and holding out hope for a return to the spotlight, I think it’s fair to say François Bugingo’s career as a journalist has just ended in disgrace.

Because this is a La Presse report on a journalist associated with Quebecor, the inevitable accusations of foul play came up quickly. Hachey explains that she began her investigation because of doubts she had about Bugingo’s stories. And reading about all the stuff he claimed to do, it’s easy to understand why. If Bugingo had made up just one or two stories, maybe nobody would have investigated. But when you become a serial fabulist, you lay the fibres of the noose your career ends up hanging from.

Reaction from journalists has been one of shock. Even by some journalists who know him personally.

Bugingo has a lawyer who says he is taking a step back from public life while he prepares a response to the report. He says he has committed himself to defending his integrity and proving his professionalism, though he doesn’t directly deny anything that’s been reported about him.

Unfortunately, La Presse story has many flaws. It takes a bunch of holes in the story as proofs that he lied.

He did lied. He admitted it. But La Presse decided to add a layer by presenting premisses that could be true or could not be true, but presented them in a way that makes think that Bugingo lied on these too. It is not honest from La Presse. When you attack someone credibility you have to make sure you are making only solid assumptions.

REACTION: People don’t remember many things that happened last year, imagine when it happened 20 years ago. If Bugingo did help as a freelancer or an intern the RFI reporter, not many would remember that 20 years later. The person who could testify died. The other colleagues in Paris? They would certainly not remember what happened on the ground. In the archives? Honestly, if a 20 years old help a veteran reporter as a stringer, his byline wont be in the story. Do you see stringers name often in the paper?

REACTION: A lot of public figures forget that they give interviews to a specific individual. A normal citizen that is not asked to do conferences, public speeches and give interviews will probably remember, public figures? Its not sure, especially if a reporter made a quick call and the conversation lasted 5-10 minutes, in broken english. Does it mean this material could not be used for a short piece on a blog or that it didn’t happen?

This last assumption could be verified though. La Presse could have asked Mr Agerschou to provide his call registry to check if he did receive a call from Bugingo phone at the beginning of the year. It would have provided more credibility to this example.

Many stringers work for nothing or don’t even realize they are working – or do it for a lunch of whatever that isn’t even reported as “payment”. Not everyone is working on a level professional playing field. Stringers generally aren’t mentioned or bylined unless (a) it’s the publisher’s policy to list all that worked, or (b) the stringer makes an agreement that requires attribution (rare, from what I see).

The problems for Bugingo isn’t any one of these situations, it’s the indication that he has been less than honest or somewhat misleading about things over a long period of time. Any one of these situations alone would be enough to hurt the career of a journalist. Taken as a whole, it appears that much of his career has been built on hype and deception, and not on actual content.

What I find interesting is how recent some of his fabrications are. I would have understood had he made up some of those stories to get a job before he became a media personality but with so many high profile gigs, why make up stuff?

Precisely. Why on earth make up stuff when you’re already employed and revered? Especially when it comes to foreign affairs. I mean. it’s not exactly an overcrowded field in the French-speaking media and there’s simply no need to inflate your CV to get a job. The guy was good, and probably the best actually. No one was contesting his crown.

Difficult to say whether what is being said about his work is all true but i do not see why another reporter would make a story about him unless she really really had something. After all, she his talking about the essence of her own job !

I just know that whatever comes out of this will not change the fact that this guy is done like dinner. I just do not like those kind of week-end trials that start with a story,follow up with the internet rage and /or praise and then gets taken over by the proper authorities…Anyway this is another story we should explore one day,the internet court…

Time will tell i guess but i do not think that it will take long seeing all the medias and stories involved. Everyone who knows anything will rush to make it public so they are not involved in a Brian Williams story Québec version…

There is no easy way out of this one . If he slightly fixed and or romanced some stories to make them more media friendly it is as bad outright lies. News reporting does not allow anything else then facts, facts and facts…at least the naive side in me thinks so…

About time.. has no integrity and suprised it took this long before his below the belt behaviour caught up with him. This may give him time to reflect all the lies he has fabricated and repent, even Saul was forgiven my brother.. it is never too late for anyone, even for you